Anchorage to Seward

We left Willow Creek early Sunday morning, July 5^th, and drove to Anchorage. No holiday weekend traffic because we left at 8AM. We drove to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and found a couple of available campsites at the U.S. Army family campground. We took it easy the rest of the day, ran a few errands and got our truck washed.

Monday we had dinner at a local restaurant called Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse, where we enjoyed their famous seafood chowder and entrees.

After dinner we drove out south of the city along the coast of the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet to watch the bore tide come in.

(According to the Alaska.org web site, a bore tide is a huge wave or series of waves that advance down Turnagain Arm in a wall of water up to 10-feet high. It is a rush of seawater that returns to a shallow and narrowing inlet from a broad bay. Bore tides come in after extreme minus low tides created by the full or new moon. The Turnagain Arm bore tide is huge—one of the biggest in the world.)

Wednesday morning, we enjoyed a hearty breakfast at Gwennie's Old Alaska Restaurant. Julie and I had eaten there in 2011 and it was just as good as we’d remembered. I had reindeer sausage and eggs.

After breakfast, we went back to the campground and got our RVs to head south to Seward and the Kenai Peninsula. Alaskans call the Kenai Peninsula their “Playground.”

Today we went to see Exit Glacier and hiked up to a viewpoint next to the glacier. We saw a bald eagle nest on the way back and stopped to take a photo. You can see the bald eagle in the photo just up and to the right of the nest.

We plan to stay in Seward until next Tuesday. All four of us are going on an all-day fishing trip today (Friday) with Puffin Fishing Charters where we’ll fish for halibut, silver salmon, rockfish and lingcod. There’s also a chance we may catch a king salmon.

Tomorrow, we’re going on a full-day Kenai Fjords National Park cruise. There’s a very good chance we’ll see whales and other sea life. We’ll visit three tidewater glaciers in the remote Northwestern Fjord.

We decided to stay an extra day in Seward so that on Monday, Vince and I can go on another all-day fishing charter. Again, we hope to catch lots of fish and fill our freezer with halibut and salmon.

Steve & Julie Cornelius